Tag: Creator of the Universe

Categories
climate change unconditional love

Storms, Storms and More Storms

This is what has been going on in my house over this weekend as Wales get battered by Storm Darragh.

Compared to many places across the globe the UK gets off lightly with extremes of weather. Oh we get weather and don’t we Brits like to talk about it. Even if you have nothing to say to anyone as you pass in the street you can always say things like “nice day” “bit cloudy/windy/rainy/sunny” “bit cold/hot/wet/dry” “its come early for winter/spring/summer/autumn” Always a something and generally a disgruntled something.

Well for the first time I think we’ve had a red weather warning. Our local Victorian pier is breaking up with the battering it is getting. Trees are coming down. Roads are blocked. Electricity is down. Christmas markets are cancelled and we’ll all be late doing our Christmas shopping!!!

But it isn’t like some places even in America where twisters and floodings and fires are becoming a thing. I was amazed at the lack of news about the fire in Ventura, California, which happened during the US elections. I only knew about it because one of the houses destroyed belonged to friends. I wonder how many other environmental disasters there are that we never hear about?

Yes environmental disasters! Because that is what this extreme weather is – an environmental disaster brought on by climate change.

I would say this isn’t normal but I think it is going to become the new normal. But also it is to be expected.

6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Matthew 26:6-13

Ok so it doesn’t mention floods and uncontrolled fires and extremes of weather, etc, but that sort of thing does appear in poetic form in the Book of Revelations later in the Bible. Worth a read as you look at these global weather phenomenons.

I’ve been doing some pondering around being a Christian, Jesus, and the whole suffering thing – encouraged by a friend last night as we were driving home. She was saying about trusting God in the storm [we were driving back from a concert as Storm Darragh was approaching North Wales] but I was then saying how many Christian friends or friends of friends I’d known who’d died in car accidents, etc. They died. We suffered grief. God didn’t stop it from happening.

Interestingly in the above verses it doesn’t say God will stop it from happening. In fact it says these things MUST happen. Too often, especially the evangelical charismatic branch of Christianity, has said God will stop us suffering. But this isn’t what Jesus says to his followers just before he dies and before the authorities turn against his followers. He says that it is only the one who stands firm who will survive.

Now I don’t think that means that we won’t get hurt, battered, lose things and people important to us. I think it means that we must stand strong in the faith that the Creator of the Universe and the one who is allowing all this chaos because they knew why loves us all unconditionally and will give us the peace and joy that transcends all understanding.

So I am grateful that I have a lovely warm solid house to be sheltered in, that we have lots of food, that we live in a town and so don’t have to get the car out, but above and beyond all that I am grateful that The Creator of The Universe loves not just me but all my family, friends, acquaintances, and even people I don’t like and don’t know, unconditionally.

[Though of course my very human side also wishes that we could have a weekend where we didn’t have to worry about the weather and could just go for a nice long walk and lunch out!!! 🙂 ]

Categories
faith suffering

Hope Inside

Baby seals at Angel Bay, Conwy. Photographed by myself Oct 2024

The seals, whether with babies or alone, always make me smile. There is something hopeful about them. I’ve been told that their numbers started to increase when the wind turbine were put in the sea because this made it harder for big fishing trawlers and so the fish population could increase and so things like seals could increase too.

At our last Upper Room gathering we finished up, after many roundabout routes, looking at the verse

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you – 1 Peter 3:15

But what is our hope? Is it just that we believe we’ll go to heaven when we die? I don’t think that’s what was meant. To be something that people will ask us about our hope has to be visible. It has to be a hope that we have enough time, energy, money but it has to be more than that. I know lots of people who don’t have a faith in God that believe that, especially after they’ve done some inner healing.

As I write this I can feel myself struggling to know how to put the hope I feel inside. It makes me realise why believers need to gather together. When we were all sat around the table together we could encourage each other and remind each other what our hope is, what goes on in our lives that we lean on God for, what goes on that we know without it we couldn’t make it.

One of the Alcoholics Anonymous steps is to give things to a higher power. Most addicts say that once they can pass things to a higher power, whether they call that power God or not [and sometimes names are not important] they let go of trying to fix things their way. Their hope for their future was placed in the hands of a higher power.

Someone recently suggested that even if we are not addicted to something noticeable we are too often addicted to our own way of doing things. They were working through the twelve steps replacing the word “drink” with “think” and handing over their thinking to a higher power.

I believe that hope comes when we fully acknowledge ourselves, fault, failings and all, and hand them over to a higher power. As I’ve said before we must not pretend we haven’t suffered because suffering is what produces the hope inside.

So if I was asked I could, hopefully say, that the hope I have inside comes from knowing that I can hand everything over to a higher power, to the Creator of the Universe, who will help and guide me, heal me and help me become all I was meant to be, and loves me unconditionally even if I get lost along the way. And that I don’t need to go back to those old ways of survival but am, is it says in the Bible, “born again“, which as I’ve said before I don’t think is a one off experience.

My hope is that even if I mess up I’ve not severed communication with the Creator of the Universe, I don’t have to go back to my old ways, but can grab on and hand things over again and again and again, and move to that place of acceptance of myself as who I truly am.

Categories
fig tree Seasons

Fruitful – When?

Aberlleiniog Castle, Anglesey. Photographed by myself October 2024

I am not going to attempt to unpack the story about Jesus cursing the fig tree [Mark 11:11-25] though too often it has been used to say that we should be fruitful in all seasons. Well just is daft.

The trees in this picture are coming to the end of their fruitful season. There berries are being eaten by birds and other wildlife, their seeds falling to the ground either to be stored by squirrels or to maybe grow into new trees. They will soon lie fallow with no leaves and nothing much going on that we can see. Though as we all know a lot goes on with both ourselves and wildlife when it looks as if we’re sleeping. Then the spring will come and leaves will slowly appear and soon the trees will be covered in leaves and flowers or catkins or something that attracts the pollinators. They are still not fruitful. It is a very short period in a tree’s life cycle when it is fruitful.

So if The Creator of The Universe made the natural world like that why on earth do we, in our busy 21st Century minds, think we should be fruitful 24-7-365? Surely The Creator intends for us to have fruitful periods and fallow periods, periods of rest and periods of growth? Isn’t that what being “natural” looks like? And I don’t know about you but I would like to look as natural as possible.

But to be natural we need to be like the trees and plants and animals and be in touch with our bodies and what they are asking of us. And because we are human beings too we need to be in touch with our hearts and be able to hear what they are saying without all the dross of “shoulds” and “oughts” of upbringing and culture.

So let us all be brave and be restful when we should be, bursting with new growth when we should be, and then, I think when it is time of us to be fruitful we can be totally committed to being fruitful because we’ve done the rest and the new growth we were meant to do beforehand.

Categories
hard outer shell made good

And God said it was Very Good [Gen 1:31]

This dog totally believe he is good, where he is is good and life is just good, especially if I am with him. Photographed by myself at Newborough beach, Anglesey October 2024

Renly believes that wherever I am is good and that he is good and that life is good. Did you know God is omnipresent which means God is with us all the time? So surely we could then at least believe that we are good – very good.

So Genesis 1:31 says God made humankind and said humankind is good; very satisfactory, our best, pleasant, interesting, better than anything else we’ve made. [paraphrase]

Meaning of “Good” thank to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/good

very satisfactory, pleasant, interesting, better, best

But do we believe it? Do we even get taught it in many of the churches we’ve been to? Too often we get taught that we are sinful, that unless we accept Jesus [whatever that might really means] we are condemned to eternal damnation, and need to repent.

I will go back to the whole idea that sin is just missing God’s mark, which we all do, but isn’t about not being made good.

Sometimes, I think, good can appear a bit of a weak word. A bit like nice. A word that is used more when things are not bad but not great, which is why I’ve added in the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

I think God looks at us and when they say good they mean more on the amazing side of ok than the “just got through” side. How about if we looked at that verse and realised that when God says good it means that we are pleasant, interesting, very satisfactory, the best for the Creator of The Universe to want to hang out with. And not just when God first made Adam and Eve but when God made each and every one of us!

But too often we get caught with the things we’ve done wrong, the hurts we’ve endured, the traumas we’ve picked up, the intergenerational stuff that hasn’t been cleared, and we look at ourselves through all this hard outer shell stuff and we forget that we were made good.

I also think it is this hard outer shell that can make us do horrid hurtful things to ourselves and to others.

I think the amazing thing about healing and learning to trust and hang out with God – whether this is through QEC, Sozo, Freedom in Christ, other trauma healing stuff from wherever, hanging out with friends who see through our hard shell and enjoy being with us, or even a phrase or sentence that slides into our hearts and chips away at that shell – is that we do see that shell for what it is; something that kept us safe from stuff that was going on around us but it is not us. And we will be safer without it.

So as we see the shell for what it is and even get to chip away at it we learn to see ourselves as was originally intended; without the “good/bad” judgements we and others place on us; without those epigenetic tags our ancestors and ourselves picked up; without the mistakes we have made. We start to see ourselves as good, very satisfactory, interesting, pleasant to be with, the best.

And I for one think that if the Creator of the Universe thinks I am good then who am I to argue????

Categories
prayer Trust God

LET GO and Let God!

I’ve been staying in County Durham, UK for a few days helping friends clear out their loft as they prepare to move. It also meant staying with my little dog’s bestest friend ever. These two dogs have loved each other since they were puppies. Even if they go over a year without seeing each other they greet each other like long lost friends and just want to hang out together. This does mean that they want to get up early to be together all day so for four mornings I was getting a gentle knock on the door by Djola asking if Renly could come out to play. Of course I indulged and we were walking at 6am most mornings.

Well one morning we were walking down the path when I could hear mooing. A load of bullocks/heifers/young cows had broken out of their field and were moodling about in the wood beneath the path. Some were starting to attempt the climb up from the woods to the path we were on. Anyway I prayed and asked God is they could sort out these cows so it was safe for us when we came back.

Half an hour later we’re on our return journey and 5 cows, one a very large black one, were on the path. So I prayed again! As I walked back towards the village the cows stayed in front of us. I was concerned because I was walking them towards the village and the road. But I also had two dogs with me, and because the footpath is right by my friend’s house I didn’t have leads for either dog!

So I’m praying but also doing what may of us often do when we pray, thinking through solutions that I could do. Interesting how we do that – say we are handing problems to the God who created the WHOLE Universe but then spend lots of headspace and energy trying to think what we could do. Not really handing it over, is it?

The cows are almost at the turning to the track behind my friend’s house when this man appears round the corner with his dog and phone to his ear. He starts to herd the cows back in my direction. I grab both dogs so none of the animals, cows or dogs, get spooked. The cows give us a wide berth and skitter back to where they came from.

The man says “I’ve just phoned the farmer” and we have a chat about cows and that they all seem to be out and he says they’ve probably broken down the fence again.

When we went out in the afternoon for a walk there was no sign of the cows. Problem fully sorted. That local man and his phone were the answers to my prayers.

Simple.

Hopefully that will help me learn to let go totally when I do pray, not hold on a wee bit and see what I can do, and allow God to find the answers as they know best.

Bullocks escaped

Prayer answered

God is amazing

Maybe not quite a haiku but it’ll do!

Categories
honour thankful

True Thankfulness

The dog with my daughter and her boyfriend with me in his sights. For Renly this is truly something to be wonderfully thankful for. Photographed by myself August 2024

Another one for me to ponder from our Upper Room gathering.

We cover so much in these times on a Friday that I’m sure God makes the time stand still. So we moved on from freedom to Gratitude, which is a big thing in self-care circles. One of our number had been told she needed to do more self-care – which to be perfectly honest I feel is a bit of waste of time if you haven’t started on the healing of childhood traumas and ways of surviving that are buried deep in the subconscious. Self-care has the potential to become just another thing to please, to survive and often to feel a failure at.

So as Christians on that healing journey with God what does it mean to “give thanks in all situations”? [1 Thessalonians 5:18]

For one I don’t think it means to say thank you God for my shitty situation, for someone still being sick, for always having to step in to help my children/grandchildren/spouse/friends/my community/the world, for someone dying horribly, for not having enough money, for seeing those you love not coping, …. [fill in your own], etc, etc, etc.

I think God wants us to cling to God in the hardness of our lives and the times when things are sad, upsetting, down right awful, but I don’t think they want us to thank them for that situation. I don’t think they want us to be all pie-in-the-sky-God’s-in-control about it all.

But what came out of the discussion was to be able to acknowledge God in the situation, to talk to God in the situation, to know that you are not alone in all this but that the Creator of the Universe is right-by you holding you through all of it, to allow you to rant and rage and cry and doubt, but at all times keep talking to them. It is to say thank you that within all this mess the Creator of the Universe loves you unconditionally, and loves all those who are involved whether they are doing harmful hurtful things or victims of their circumstances or whatever.

So now when I wake I thank God that I’m awake and have another day before me to walk through. And when I go to sleep I thank God that I’ve made it through another day even if I’ve made mistakes, been hurt, hurt others, and found things tough or easy, fun or hard. I have had the gift of life that I have been able to walk through with my Creator. And that to me is more than enough to say Thank you for, even if things haven’t worked out as I’d have liked, even if people I love had still died, are still struggling, are distant, or whatever.

To me it is the honour of walking through another day with The Creator God by my side.

Categories
freedom Love

True Freedom

I keep writing and rewriting this post, which is why it has taken a long time. Sometimes posts just fly out of me and other times they struggle. One of the things is that at times I think about who I’m writing to and then almost contain the words that I don’t think would fit that person, which seems a very interesting revelation to myself when I am wanting to write a post about being really free.

So yesterday I got myself a can of Dr Pepper and sat in a cafe looking out the window with pen in hand and waited to see what happened. And here are my thoughts

True freedom is about going with flow and not worry about what other people think.

True freedom is not about achieving or ambition or even having stuff.

True freedom is about being content in your own skin and knowing that what you’ve done is what you’ve done.

True freedom is not about being a success or about succeeding in a world that is always changing its boundaries, goal posts and rules of the race.

True freedom is about not caring what the race is or what the imposed boundaries are.

True freedom is not caring about what other people think so they will love you.

True freedom is not caring about who takes the credit for the success that happen with or around you.

Not caring is not the same as not loving especially if the love comes with strings attached.

True freedom is

Finally able to

Receive

Everything

Envy-free

Devoid of the ties

Of other people’s [and your own]

Motives and expectations

And, I believe, True Freedom can only be obtained when one loves oneself unconditionally and when one knows one is loved unconditionally – especially when one knows that unconditional love comes from the Creator of the Universe/The Universe. But I also think one will struggle to receive that love unless one loves oneself unconditionally and stops comparing oneself to others.

Categories
nutrition psalm

Psalm 23 – Part 3

River walk at St Asaph. Photographed by myself April 2024

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,

Psalm 23:1-2a

If I was being good and doing things in chronological order this one should be part 2 but hey ho! This is how I do things. Like I say I don’t promise to even do the whole Psalm but you never know. I am learning to be me more and more and more.

When we were talking about this at our house group last Friday one of my friends said something along the lines of “God leads us, we just have to follow. We don’t have to go hunting for our own food stuff“.

How often have we stressed and pondered and angst to know where to go and what to do when all along we just needed to stop, listen to God’s voice – which we are promised as his sheep we will hear [John 10:27] – but how often do we stop and listen to that voice? How often do we think we know best? Or that we don’t really hear that voice?

Perhaps we don’t trust that God cares enough about us, that we aren’t loved unconditionally. That’s a lie of the enemy! God loves each and everyone of us unconditionally and knows what is best of us. God knows where the best grass for me is – hence quite forcefully nudging me to put a very vulnerable prayer request on a WhatsApp prayer group I’m part of. But God knows that will help me as much by articulating it in WhatsApp as getting my dear friends to pray about it.

My lush fulfilling grass and yours or someone else’s won’t be the same because even though we are compared to sheep we aren’t really. We are uniquely made human beings with different personalities, different needs, different past hurts, different expectations, different skills. But all of us need to stop angsting and start trusting that the Creator of the Universe wants to lead us to the best grass for our needs because God is our parent, our carer, our maker, and our friend and wants to best for each and everyone of us no matter what circumstance we are in.

So just

STOP/WAIT

LISTEN

TRUST

and believe the Good Shepherd knows what is best for you.

Categories
hope plans

What Plans?

Where are we going? says the little dog trusting that his owners will not let him down. Clwyddian Hills 17th March 2024 Photographed by myself

I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places

Jeremiah 29: 10-14

This came up in a Bible reading the other day it and got me thinking. So often we hear sermons or have a poster with the highlighted bit – “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future” – or a version of that. And we see it as God having some great plan for us that we need to seek out and only when we find this right plan will be prosper, have hope and a future.

I hate to say it but whatever we do we have a future. There is no choice is that one. Also having hope, I believe is a state of mind. You can be in the perfect place, with the perfect weather, with those people who are kind and supportive, with the best of the best around you, but you can still feel like you are missing something, that things are not hopeful. Just look at all the famous successful people who take their own lives to have evidence of that. But also look at those people on holiday who just look a bit sad. Hope comes from the inside.

But also look at what Jeremiah says around those verses that so many know so well. It says that God will bring us back from a place where we have felt deserted, where we have allowed the worries of the world to overwhelm us. I do think “captivity” is being caught up in the worries of the world and not living in hope, not realising that no matter what’s happen the Creator of the Universe loves each one of us. That doesn’t mean outside circumstances will be great but inside of us we can call on the Lord and be heard. We can be freed from the captivity of our own making.

But here’s the catch – we need to seek God with all our hearts. Not just the bit that wants the Creator to make things right for us, but that is willing to say “here’s my heart. Even the grumpy bits. But even those bits are seeking you because I know you love the out-of-sorts parts of me as much as the parts I show to the rest of the world when I’m trying to show I’m doing ok.”

So are we willing to seek God with all our hearts so God can release us from our own captivity. [Remember at this point in the history of Israel they were in exile because they put things before God] and trust that whatever we do – whether that is chatting to someone in the park or sorting out climate change – that this is the plan God has for us and through that we have hope because hope in inside of us because we hang out with God?

I also think plans God has for us are also the things that make our hearts sing and so we don’t have angst and beat ourselves up but we need to slow down and listen to our own hearts. But of course that means we need some silence, some trust, and maybe that hope!

Categories
connected loving kindness

Loving Kindness

Renly just emanating love and kindness especially after being released from under the throw on the spare room couch!!! Photographed by myself 1st March 2024

Yesterday I spoke on using creative writing for therapeutic purposes at an event on self-care. It finished with a meditation of which the key words that stood out for me were “loving kindness“. Loving kindness to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, to the random people we come across in our daily lives.

A lot of what I caught of the day was of how the energy we emit affects those around us. So if I feel at peace I emanate peace and so hand on peace to others. Again if I emanate fear then that is what I will pass on to others. That was along with like grounding ourselves, realising our own energy, loving ourselves, knowing our own power, trusting in our hearts, listening to guides.

It has always been something I have believed for a long time and the more I read and study the Bible see all the above as a total God/Jesus thing.

Yet it is so rare to hear talks in Churches or with other Christians about their energy, of living out their beliefs, of trusting that still small voice, of being grounded and connected with Earth and Spirit, when I think those things should be paramount.

I truly believe that if we could talk more about this and explored it from a non-judgemental stand-point we would understand it better. And then we would believe more about how connected we are to God and their Universe in a more holistic way. I think, again if we were open and non-judgemental when we talked with others about these things more people would see the connection of all this amazing stuff they are exploring with the God who created the Universe who loves each of us unconditionally.

So to give the Creator of the Universe a bit of a chance in this world that is looking for that connected unconditional love we need to believe it more. Also Christians need to stop seeing these lovely people I mixed with yesterday as outsiders who need to be converted to the Christian “norm” of whatever theology we believe. Instead we need to get into dialogue with them, and with others who have no spiritual leanings at all, again in the non-judgemental way. I think this will lead to us growing and learning and realising how diverse God actually is. And maybe it would increase our faith?

With all things we must put LOVING KINDNESS at the centre of all we do and say and believe so that this is what springs from us and flows to others.

To hear some Christians talking outside of the religious box and sharing deep connected beliefs in our modern world check out Christine Sine’s Liturgical Rebels podcasts